This paper aims to produce a defense of the ethical significance of Confucian ritual. An adequate defense must explain how these conventions are based in a culturally-neutral, objective ground. After a brief account of how Confucians view the relationship between rituals and moral goodness, I consider three sorts of justification. Mencian naturalism appeals to a conception of flourishing that is grounded in human nature. Xunzian consequentialism looks to how ritual brings about social order. I argue that both of these approaches (...) fail because they are unable to account for the normative fineness of rituals, which refers to the precision and detail of ritual propriety. Instead, I look to Xunzi for a justification of rituals in terms of their role in beautifying human nature. I argue that this view provides a sort of objective ground for ritual, while also preserving their normative fineness. I conclude with remarks on how Xunzian aestheticism may be useful for understanding other areas of moral life. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, the most characteristic activity of friendship is “living together” [to suzên]. This paper seeks to understand living together in the light of his famous, foundational claim that humans are social by nature. Based on an interpretation of Nicomachean Ethics 9.9, I explain our need for friends in terms of a more fundamental human need to appreciate one's life as a whole. I then argue that friendship is built into the very structure of human life itself such that (...) human living is living together. (shrink)

Defended by scholars such as John McDowell and Julia Annas, the naturalism of second nature (NSN) claims that the virtues are part of a rational second nature in- stilled through moral education. While NSN emphasizes that rationality, fully devel- oped, results in autonomy from nature, it is considered a sort of naturalism because the development of rational second nature unfolds through entirely natural processes. Critics object that NSN does not utilize human nature as a standard of evaluation, which is a (...) problem for a view that claims to be a sort of naturalism. This paper at- tempts to meet this charge by introducing a novel way to understand the normative significance of human nature. It argues that NSN supports an analysis of human nature as the raw material of the virtues and, as such, the basis of a kind of aesthetic evaluation. Specifically, human nature is the basis of humaneness, a kind of beauty that belongs to what elevates or refines human nature. Thus, according to the fortified naturalism of second nature the ethical significance of human nature is explained by recognizing how the virtues exemplify a kind of beauty that only humans can have. (shrink)

This paper seeks to assess the claim of Aristotelian naturalism to successfully vindicate the virtues. To this end, I consider two ways to understand the claims of Aristotelian naturalism and, thus, the normative authority of nature. The first is represented by an interpretation of Aristotelian naturalism as defending the claim that practical rationality is species-relative. I argue that the view fails because it cannot accommodate certain forms of moral disagreement. As an alternative, I propose seeing Aristotelian naturalism as the expression (...) of a particular ethical outlook, which is based on identifying as a living organism in the order of nature. Since this identification is neither universal nor necessary, my view suggests that Aristotelian naturalism is more parochial than its proponents believe, but it is not, for that reason, invalidated. As an articulation of the fundamental principles of a particular ethical outlook, Aristotelian naturalism can provide a limited form of vindication for certain virtues. I conclude with remarks on the prospects for naturalist vindication beyond an ethical outlook. (shrink)

Ethical pluralists hold that moral values and systems are irreducibly diverse and incommensurable according to a common scale. One criticism of the view is that accepting such incommensurability renders them unable to criticize values, practices, institutions, and so forth that are genuinely bad. This paper considers two ways that pluralists have appealed to human nature to answer this criticism. One way appeals to nature to ground a positive conception of human flourishing, whereas the other appeals to nature as a source (...) of constraints. I argue that both views fail to meet the criticism in a satisfactory way and then advance a view that improves upon the existing options. Specifically, I argue that human nature is the standard by which it is possible to assess humaneness, which is a kind of beauty that represents the elevation or refinement of human nature. Accordingly, pluralists can deploy judgments of humaneness to criticize practices, institutions, and so forth that are not worth tolerating without violating the spirit of pluralism. (shrink)

What kind of reference (if any) do terms such as “pencil,” “chair,” “television,” and so on have? On the matter, a de-bate between directly referential theorists and descriptiv-ist theorists is open. It is largely acknowledged that natural kind terms (such as “water,” “gold,” “tiger,” etc.) are directly referential expressions (cf. Putnam,1975). That is, they are expressions whose reference is determined by their refer-ents' nature, independent of whether we know or will ever know what this nature is. However, it does not (...) seem like-wise convincing that all artifactual kind terms (like “pen-cil,” “chair,” “television,” etc.) semantically behave the same. Terms for artifactual kinds seem more likely to be subjected to a descriptivist view, that is, definable not by links to their extensions' nature but in terms of conjunctions or clusters of properties. In his celebrated “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” (1975), Hilary Putnam originated the mentioned debate by arguing that artifactual kind terms also refer directly. Thus, the discussion ultimately revolves around establishing whether artifactual and natural kind terms are both directly referential expressions. The authors engaged in this debate have tried to argue in favor of (or against) Putnam's proposal by highlighting the similarities (or differences) between nat-ural vis-à-vis artifactual kind words and their respective ref-erents. This paper aims to provide a thorough and reasoned overview of the debate at stake, pointing out trends and problems associated with each proposed account. (shrink)

Written by two of the leading figures in the field, this is a lucid and systematic introduction to semantics as applied to transformational grammars of the ...

The received view of Martin Heidegger’s work is that he leaves little room for reason in the practice of philosophy or the conduct of life. Citing his much-scorned remark that reason is the “stiff-necked adversary of thought”, critics argue that Heidegger’s philosophy effectively severs the tie between reason and normativity, leaving anyone who adheres to his position without recourse to justifying reasons for their beliefs and actions. Transcending Reason is a collection of essays by leading Heidegger scholars that challenges this (...) view by exploring new ways to understand Heidegger’s approach to the relationship between reason, normativity, and the philosophical methodology that gives us access to these issues. The volume points to Heidegger’s novel approach to reason understood in terms of what he calls Dasein’s ‘transcendence’—the ability to occupy the world as a space of normatively structured meanings in which we navigate our striving to be. By examining the strengths and weaknesses of this new and innovative take on Heidegger’s philosophy, this collection considers the possibility that he does not sever but rather reconceives the relation between reason and normativity. -/- . (shrink)

For the first time, the reader can have a synoptic view of the reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, East and West, in a multicultural perspective. All the major themes of Pythagoreanism are addressed, from mathematics, number philosophy and metaphysics to ethics and religious thought.

The commentaries on the Ethica nova and the Ethica vetus written by some masters of the arts – presumably operating in the Paris faculty – in the first half of the thirteenth century expound in an original way the doctrine of the virtutes consuetudinales which Aristotle, at the end of the first book of his Ethica (I 13), distinguishes into the two main classes of the “moral virtues” and the “intellectual virtues”. The present paper aims at highlighting the particularly important (...) task which is assigned to the intellectual virtues in these early commentaries: joining man to God directly, through a contemplation which becomes love. The masters of the arts maintain that the moral virtues, in spite of the definition given by Aristotle (habitus a quo quis bonus est et opus eius bene reddit), are not sufficient alone to bring man to perfection, but that other more perfect virtues, namely the intellectual ones, are needed in order to make him know and love the supreme good. Having no knowledge of the sixth book of the Ethica, in which Aristotle deals in particular with the intellectual virtues, our masters know only their general description and are concerned with clarifying their relationships with the moral virtues, compared to which they appear to be sometimes really distinct and sometimes united to them in sharing the recta ratio, so much that they may constitute a double virtue. Although the masters of the arts seem to be well-informed about the teaching of the theologians – which they often cite without opposing to it, albeit stressing their own philosophical point of view –, it is significant that no reference whatsoever is made by them to the theological virtues and that they have recourse to the themes of Avicennian mysticism such as the doctrine of the two faces of the soul. Besides presenting the commentaries on the Ethica vetus from a general point of view, I will focus on the Paris commentary in Ethicam veterem (Paris BN lat. 3804A, ff. 152ra-159vb, 241ra-247vb; Paris BN lat. 3572, ff. 226ra-235ra), of which I am preparing a critical edition. The Paris commentary contains in fact a special and original discussion of the doctrine of the virtutes intellectuales. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 9, September 2022.

The surface grammar of reports such as ‘I have a pain in my leg’ suggests that pains are objects which are spatially located in parts of the body. We show that the parallel construction is not available in Mandarin. Further, four philosophically important grammatical features of such reports cannot be reproduced. This suggests that arguments and puzzles surrounding such reports may be tracking artefacts of English, rather than philosophically significant features of the world.

El artículo se centra en el filósofo argentino Eugenio Pucciarelli (1907-1995) y su recepción de la fenomenología, a la que confiere un sesgo humanista. Se procederá a una introducción a su contribución a la fenomenología en América Latina y se abordarán los siguientes temas: 1) la misión de la filosofía, las diversas vías de acceso a su esencia, en particular aquellas de Scheler, Dilthey y Husserl, 2) su recepción de Husserl en cuanto concierne a los ideales de ciencia y de (...) razón, 3) la crisis de la razón y de la evidencia, 4) su concepción pluralista de la razón, del tiempo y de la cultura, 5) humanismo y libertad. La tesis sostiene que su concepción de la filosofía, que enfatiza la dimensión personal y el compromiso social de la práctica filosófica, revela un profundo humanismo pluralista que no descuida su función militante y crítica, evidenciado así la actualidad de su mensaje. (shrink)

This paper enquires into a paradigmatic change concerning the concept of motion: from a phenomenological conception of motion understood as a continuous and finite process of translation, to a physical conception of motion as rectilinear, uniform and continuous, that is, as an inertial state that if unhindered, can extend infinitely – the former held by Aristotle, the latter by Koyré, a shift that is evidenced by their contrasting treatment of Zeno’s paradoxes. I argue that both ontologies of motion can be (...) understood in phenomenological terms: Motion is accomplished by the real itself. However, while Aristotle’s continuous motion as actualization of the form of a given body involves its formal determination and constitution of sense, Koyré’s conceives of motion and rest as kinds of being and motion itself as exemplifcation of the mathematization of nature that Husserl described in the Crisis. Taken together, these changes presuppose a transformation of metaphysical and epistemic frameworks. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) -- Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) -- Martin Buber (1878-1965) -- Leo Strauss (1899-1973) -- Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995).

本书从教师职业素质和专业发展的角度出发,参考借鉴了网络上颇为流行的《做教师的22条军规》的部分条款,分成运筹职业:三尺讲台与你一生有约;决胜课堂:让你的教学充满激情与诗意;倾情心田:让爱做主,剑指未来 :让你的教师生涯洒满阳光四个部分。.

本书主要对东西文化和中西印哲学作了相当广泛的讨论,涵摄科学哲学、文化哲学、人生哲学、宗教哲学、历史哲学、比较哲学等方面的内容,表现出超越式的融合趋向。.

Compiled by scholars at the court of Liu An, king of Huainan, in the second century B.C.E, _The Huainanzi_ is a tightly organized, sophisticated articulation of Western Han philosophy and statecraft. Outlining "all that a modern monarch needs to know," the text emphasizes rigorous self-cultivation and mental discipline, brilliantly synthesizing for readers past and present the full spectrum of early Chinese thought. _The Huainanzi_ locates the key to successful rule in a balance of broad knowledge, diligent application, and the penetrating (...) wisdom of a sage. It is a unique and creative synthesis of Daoist classics, such as the _Laozi_ and the _Zhuangzi_; works associated with the Confucian tradition, such as the _Changes_, the _Odes_, and the _Documents_; and a wide range of other foundational philosophical and literary texts from the _Mozi_ to the _Hanfeizi_. The product of twelve years of scholarship, this remarkable translation preserves _The Huainanzi_'s special rhetorical features, such as parallel prose and verse, and showcases a compositional technique that conveys the work's powerful philosophical appeal. This path-breaking volume will have a transformative impact on the field of early Chinese intellectual history and will be of great interest to scholars and students alike. (shrink)

Summary During his prolific career, the German Jewish scientist Franz Boas (Minden, 1858 - New York, 1942) recognized as the founding father of American Cultural Anthropology – maintained assiduous contacts with the European scientific community, in a privileged way with that of the German area. The contribution addresses the Boasian correspondence with the two directors of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, the philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf, and the ethnomusicolo-gist Erich Moritz von Hornbostel. All three were united by a common scientific experimental (...) training and a solid musical education, typical of their Bildungsbu ü rgertum. With them, Boas consistently shared his fieldwork findings regarding music, sound, and language among the Indians of British Columbia: indeed, their epistolary exchanges intertwine epistemological reflections centered on the study of «exotische Musik» in context with technical problems, derived from the use of phonographic recordings and the relative shipments of wax cylinders by Boas to the Phonographic Archive. So far, the critical literature has not paid particular attention to their correspondence, that offer instead a privileged look in observing the birth of Ethnomusicology, at the time still defined as comparative Musicology (vergleichende Musikwissenschaft). Starting from a biographical contextualization and following the micro-history of the scientific and personal relationship of these scientists, the contribution aims to explore the hypothesis that the emerging Ethnomusicology significantly contributed to the definition of Cultural Anthropology as a discipline. In his painstaking research devoted to the Native Indian sounds and languages, Boas observed indeed what happens if a mind is exposed to a new sound, musical or linguistic context; he had therefore to rigorously deal with the phenomena of mishearing, sound-blindness and biasing filter related to the perception of «new sounds». Thanks to his fieldwork, Boas would endorse a relativistic and “in context” approach to perception and mental representations of sounds, fostering his eventual lifelong, hectic concern about a broaden antiracist theory of human mental functions. (shrink)

Ignorance is commonly assumed to be a lack of knowledge in Plato’s Socratic dialogues. I challenge that assumption. In the Protagoras, ignorance is conceived to be a substantive, structural psychic flaw—the soul’s domination by inferior elements that are by nature fit to be ruled. Ignorant people are characterized by both false beliefs about evaluative matters in specific situations and an enduring deception about their own psychic conditions. On my interpretation, akrasia, moral vices, and epistemic vices are products or forms of (...) ignorance, and a person who lacks knowledge is not necessarily ignorant. (shrink)

This is a collection of papers by Prof. Liu Shuhsien, Chinese University of Hong Kong, on his recent research in contemporary Chinese Philosophy. The first volume Personagestudies the following five figures who exerted a great influence on contemporary Chinese philosophy: Hu Shi (westernisation), Mao Zedong (Marxism), Feng Youlan, Xiong Shili and Mou Songsan (New Confucianism).

This essay is a critical review of two recent collections, Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, edited by Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby and Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender, edited by Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. While the collections differ in their manner of addressing the critical sources that have inspired them-the former relying upon a single theorist, the latter attempting to move through some of the philosophical history that constitutes our present theoretical terrain-both attempt to (...) think through and thus revisualize some of the categories of difference which we have inherited. Though the best essays from these collections are celebrated for demonstrating how "feminism as critique" can work to move us toward a clearer and more inclusive feminist theory, questions are raised about what the inattention to race in these volumes suggests about our own role in the construction of power and knowledge, and the erasures that help to secure them both. (shrink)

In this collection of original essays, leading scholars of East Asian studies seek to define the deeply religious dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian thought and practice in order to demonstrate its intellectual connections with other traditions of thought--such as Taoism, Buddhism, and Shintoism--at specific junctures in history.

In dem allgemeinen Denkmodus des antiken Platonismus (Platon und Plotin) und Kants wird das Sein der sinnlichen, in der Zeit existierenden Dinge apriorisch von dem als „zeitlos“ verstandenen Denken bestimmt und erfasst. Mit der Untersuchung der Grundgedanken Platons, Plotins und Kants kommt das Buch zur Konklusion, dass die apriorische Bestimmung und Erfassung des Seins in diesem Denkmodus erst durch diejenige Zeit möglich ist, die von der Autorin als „ontologische Zeit“ bestimmt wird. Die Art und Weise, wie die ontologische Zeit zu (...) diesem Zweck dient, wird in diesem Buch erforscht. Während für den antiken Platonismus die Zeit, indem sie das Intelligible auf das Sinnliche überträgt, als das bestimmende Prinzip des Seins der sinnlichen Dinge gilt, ist der Fall bei Kant aber komplizierter, da hier die verschiedenen Aspekte des Seins unterschiedlich begründet werden müssen: die ontologische Zeit fungiert mit ihrer strukturellen Affinität zu den Kategorien als das Prinzip des Was-Seins der sinnlichen Gegenstände, während der Raum das Prinzip des Dass-Seins derselben ist, sofern die Äußerlichkeit der Raum-Zeit-Anschauungsformen in Beziehung auf den Verstand mit dem Argumentationsversuch der Autorin beseitigt wird. (shrink)

刘如瑛(1924~ ),江苏铜山人,扬州大学师范学院中文系古代文学教授,硕士研究生指导教师.

Fodor argues that speech perception is accomplished by a module. Typically, modular processing is taken to be bottom-up processing. Yet there is ubiquitous empirical evidence that speech perception is influenced by top-down processing. Fodor attempts to resolve this conflict by denying that modular processing must be exclusively bottom-up. It is argued, however, that Fodor's attempt to reconcile top-down and modular processing fails, because: (i) it undermines Fodor's own conception of modular processing; and (ii) it cannot account for the contextually varying (...) top-down influences that characterize speech perception. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Wie in anderen Ländern, so galt Einstein auch in China als einer der berühmtesten Wissenschaftler schlechthin. In den siebziger Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts wurden drei Bände Einstein’scher Schriften zusammengestellt, übersetzt und als Einsteins gesammelte Werke veröffentlicht. Diese Bände dienten lange Zeit vielen Chinesen als Hauptwissensquelle über Einstein; sie übten sogar einen bedeutenden ideologischen Einfluss aus. Im Hintergrund dieses herausgeberischen Projekts standen in der Zeit nach 1949 einflussreiche politische Bewegungen im Zusammenwirken mit wissenschaftskritischen Ansätzen, die ein solches Projekt erst möglich machten (...) und die Textauswahl sowie die Herangehensweise bei der Übersetzung und den Druckvorbereitungen beeinflussten. Unter den Herausgebern und Übersetzern kommt Xu Liangying eine besondere und wichtige Rolle zu, denn er war ursprünglich, vor der Gründung der Republik China, ein Untergrundrevolutionär gewesen. Später wurde er Wissenschaftshistoriker. Es vergingen fast 10 Jahre, bis er die Übersetzung der Einstein’schen Schriften fertigstellen konnte, da er gleichzeitig als Bauer auf dem Lande arbeiten musste und während der „Anti-Rechts-Bewegung” „rechts” stand. Die Übersetzung und Veröffentlichung von Einsteins gesammelten Werken in diesem besonderen soziologischen, kulturellen und politischen Kontext bietet viel Stoff für Rückblicke und Aufarbeitungen aus historischer Perspektive. Vor allem die ideologischen, symbolischen Implikationen in Zusammenhang mit Einstein waren ein dominantes Merkmal jener Zeit. (shrink)

Comme dans les autres pays, Einstein a été l’un des scientifiques les plus célèbres en Chine. Dans les années soixante-dix du 20e siècle, trois volumes des OEuvres complètes d’Einstein ont été traduits et publiés en Chine. Pour de nombreux Chinois ces volumes représentaient une source d’informations sur Einstein et une influence idéologique importante. Le contexte politique en est le suivant: après l’an 1949 des mouvements politiques très influents sont nés en Chine, ayant pour objectif la critique des sciences. Ces mouvements (...) ont beaucoup influencé les décisions, la sélection, le progrès ainsi que la manière de traduire et de publier les oeuvres d’Einstein. Parmi les éditeurs et les traducteurs excellait Xu Liangying. Révolutionnaire clandestin avant la mise en place de la République, il est devenu par la suite historien de la science. Il a investi presque dix ans pour terminer la traduction des oeuvres d’Einstein parce qu’ à l’époque il travaillait comme agriculteur pour ses idées de droite pendant la Révolution culturelle. Dans ce contexte sociologique, culturel et politique, la traduction et la publication des OEuvres complètes d’Einstein offre beaucoup de points qui méritent d’être examinés et analysés dans une perspective historique. Surtout, par exemple, les implications idéologiques, symboliques reliés à Einstein et qui ont été les caractéristiques dominantes de cette époque historique. (shrink)

As in other countries, Einstein has been one of the most famous scientists in China. In 1970’s, the three volumes Collection of Einstein in Chinese have been selected, translated and published, which was the main sources for Chinese people knowing Einstein for long time, and even had important ideological influence. However, as the background of it, in China, there were very influential political movements related to criticism of science after 1949, which also influenced the decision, selection, progress and the way (...) of the translating and publishing of Einstein’s works. Among the editors and translators, XU Liangying was a special and important person, who was originally a underground revolutionist before establishment of the Republic, and latterly became a historian of science. He spent nearly ten years to finish the most translation when he was a real peasant in countryside and a “righty” because of the “anti-righty“ movement. During the translating work and the publication of Collection of Einstein in that special social, cultural and political context then, there were many things worth to look back and analyze their meanings by a historical perspective reflection. Especially, the ideological symbolic implication related to the Einstein has been a very dominant characteristic in the history mentioned here. (shrink)